Field of the Invention
The invention is directed to apparel sizing. More specifically the invention is directed to systems and methods of uniform remote sizing of apparel including but not limited to footwear to improve the experience of shopping online or in-person for such articles as shoes, sneakers, and clothing, especially (but not necessarily) for children.
Description of Related Art
Apparel comes in different sizes. Clothing such as shirts often come in small, medium, large, extra-large, etc. These general-sounding sizes typically vary from brand to brand. Shoes, however, are assigned what seem like very specific numerical sizes, including half-sizes and widths, and including separate numerical ranges for children and adults. In reality, however, the seemingly specific numerical size of a shoe in one brand can be very different in another brand, and can even vary from product to product within a brand. As an example, a size 6 in an X Co. shoe could correspond to a size 7 in a Y Co. shoe, a size 5 in a Z Co. shoe, and even a size 6½ in an X Co. sneaker. As another example, a “youth size 1” in one brand could be 197 mm in length, while the “youth size 1” of another brand could be 212 mm in length, a difference of nearly 10%. It can be difficult to know what size a person is in any type of apparel.
In-store purchases are supposedly easy, in that one can try on a pair of shoes before buying them. However, buying clothing and shoes for children can be problematic. Often, children (especially younger children) have a low tolerance for boring activities such as buying shoes. Physical stores will necessarily have a finite number of brands and sizes from which to choose. Often, the sales representative must shuttle back and forth between the customer(s) and the stock room to retrieve pair after pair after pair. For most adults this is tedious, but for children (and some adults, too), it is intolerable.
As another alternative, people increasingly often buy apparel via the internet without trying on the apparel first. This can save parents and their children the turmoil and potential agony of shoe/clothing shopping in person. However, online shopping is fraught with its own disadvantages. Primarily, by not trying on an article before purchasing it, the purchaser has no accurate concept if something fits properly or not. One might be able to use one's size in a particular brand as a general guide, however as noted above, sizes can vary greatly from brand to brand and among different styles within the same brand. As a result, a significant percentage of online apparel transactions result in a return, which costs the manufacturer part of its profit and significant hassle on the part of the purchaser. Moreover, since children are constantly growing, a pair of shoes or a shirt/jacket purchased even a few months earlier may not be an accurate indicator of what a child's current size is. This is frustrating for parents, but it also makes it difficult for adults further removed from the children than parents (e.g., grandparents, other relatives, band directors or school personnel purchasing uniforms, etc.) to purchase apparel on behalf of children.
Some attempts to address this issue have been made but come up short. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,741,728 to Genest, a complex system of three-dimensional scanning of the customer's foot is provided, and when that scanning data is compared to a database of footwear, a series of footwear options are presented to the customer. This system is quite disadvantageous for several reasons. First, the system requires a 3D scan of the foot, which is difficult to achieve for adults and likely impossible to achieve for children even under the best of circumstances. Moreover, such a 3D scan must be accomplished at a store or some other retail location and cannot feasibly be done by the user herself at home. Second, the system does not provide the key piece of information to the user: what the foot's actual size is. While the Genest system does inform the user what shoes would be a good fit, that keeps the user out of the loop and unable to share the relevant size information with another party (e.g., grandparent, teacher, etc.) or even use the information himself at other retailers.
In US Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0168329 to Ishimaru, again, a complex three-dimensional scan of the foot is made, and a custom-made shoe last is created to the specific dimensions of the scanned data. This system is completely unworkable and cost prohibitive for selling conventional retail footwear. Moreover, it is even less usable for children's footwear, since the child's foot is constantly growing, and a new last would need to be made every 60-90 days.
Accordingly, there is a long-felt need to enable people to shop for apparel such as footwear and anything else that comes in varying sizes online in which people can be reasonably certain in advance that an article will fit properly.
There is also a long-felt need to enable people to determine their size or the size of their children themselves, remotely, so as to facilitate online purchases of clothing.
There is a further long-felt need to enable people to shop for apparel for other people, including and especially other people's children, without having the benefit of the children present.